"Why We Know Iraq is Lying" A Column by Dr. Condoleezza Rice
By Condoleezza Rice
Originally appeared in the New York Times on January 23, 2003

WASHINGTON. Eleven weeks after the United Nations Security Council
unanimously passed a resolution demanding yet again that Iraq
disclose and disarm all its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons
programs, it is appropriate to ask, "Has Saddam Hussein finally decided
to voluntarily disarm?" Unfortunately, the answer is a clear and
resounding no.

There is no mystery to voluntary disarmament. Countries that decide
to disarm lead inspectors to weapons and production sites, answer
questions before they are asked, state publicly and often the intention
to disarm and urge their citizens to cooperate. The world knows from
examples set by South Africa, Ukraine and Kazakhstan what it looks like
when a government decides that it will cooperatively give up its
weapons of mass destruction. The critical common elements of these
efforts include a high-level political commitment to disarm, national
initiatives to dismantle weapons programs, and full cooperation and
transparency.

In 1989 South Africa made the strategic decision to dismantle its
covert nuclear weapons program. It destroyed its arsenal of seven
weapons and later submitted to rigorous verification by the
International Atomic Energy Agency. Inspectors were given complete
access to all nuclear facilities (operating and defunct) and the people
who worked there. They were also presented with thousands of documents
detailing, for example, the daily operation of uranium enrichment
facilities as well as the construction and dismantling of specific
weapons.

Ukraine and Kazakhstan demonstrated a similar pattern of
cooperation when they decided to rid themselves of the nuclear weapons,
intercontinental ballistic missiles and heavy bombers inherited from
the Soviet Union. With significant assistance from the United States
warmly accepted by both countries disarmament was orderly, open and
fast. Nuclear warheads were returned to Russia. Missile silos and heavy
bombers were destroyed or dismantled once in a ceremony attended by
the American and Russian defense chiefs. In one instance, Kazakhstan
revealed the existence of a ton of highly enriched uranium and asked
the United States to remove it, lest it fall into the wrong hands.

Iraq's behavior could not offer a starker contrast. Instead of a
commitment to disarm, Iraq has a high-level political commitment to
maintain and conceal its weapons, led by Saddam Hussein and his son
Qusay, who controls the Special Security Organization, which runs
Iraq's concealment activities. Instead of implementing national
initiatives to disarm, Iraq maintains institutions whose sole purpose
is to thwart the work of the inspectors. And instead of full
cooperation and transparency, Iraq has filed a false declaration to the
United Nations that amounts to a 12,200-page lie.

For example, the declaration fails to account for or explain Iraq's
efforts to get uranium from abroad, its manufacture of specific fuel
for ballistic missiles it claims not to have, and the gaps previously
identified by the United Nations in Iraq's accounting for more than two
tons of the raw materials needed to produce thousands of gallons of
anthrax and other biological weapons.

Iraq's declaration even resorted to unabashed plagiarism, with
lengthy passages of United Nations reports copied word-for-word (or
edited to remove any criticism of Iraq) and presented as original text.
Far from informing, the declaration is intended to cloud and confuse
the true picture of Iraq's arsenal. It is a reflection of the regime's
well-earned reputation for dishonesty and constitutes a material breach
of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441, which set up the
current inspections program.

Unlike other nations that have voluntarily disarmed and in
defiance of Resolution 1441 Iraq is not allowing inspectors
"immediate, unimpeded, unrestricted access" to facilities and people
involved in its weapons program. As a recent inspection at the home of
an Iraqi nuclear scientist demonstrated, and other sources confirm,
material and documents are still being moved around in farcical shell
games. The regime has blocked free and unrestricted use of aerial
reconnaissance.

The list of people involved with weapons of mass destruction
programs, which the United Nations required Iraq to provide, ends with
those who worked in 1991 even though the United Nations had previously
established that the programs continued after that date. Interviews
with scientists and weapons officials identified by inspectors have
taken place only in the watchful presence of the regime's agents. Given
the duplicitous record of the regime, its recent promises to do better
can only be seen as an attempt to stall for time.

Last week's finding by inspectors of 12 chemical warheads not
included in Iraq's declaration was particularly troubling. In the past,
Iraq has filled this type of warhead with sarin a deadly nerve agent
used by Japanese terrorists in 1995 to kill 12 Tokyo subway passengers
and sicken thousands of others. Richard Butler, the former chief United
Nations arms inspector, estimates that if a larger type of warhead that
Iraq has made and used in the past were filled with VX (an even
deadlier nerve agent) and launched at a major city, it could kill up to
one million people. Iraq has also failed to provide United Nations
inspectors with documentation of its claim to have destroyed its VX
stockpiles.

Many questions remain about Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons programs and arsenal and it is Iraq's obligation to provide
answers. It is failing in spectacular fashion. By both its actions and
its inactions, Iraq is proving not that it is a nation bent on
disarmament, but that it is a nation with something to hide. Iraq is
still treating inspections as a game. It should know that time is
running out.